Posted by: mschrag
Do you live under a rock? - 15/07/2004 10:22
If so, Doom 3 = August 5, officially announced. Feel free to clean yourself up now. Oh, that's 2004 
Do you live under a rock?
Posted by: CommOri
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 15/07/2004 10:42
Actually, 12:01AM August 3rd at some stores...if you're lucky.
Posted by: AndrewT
Re: Do you live under a rock? [Doom3] - 15/07/2004 21:36
I'd like to get this ASAP to the release date in the UK without paying over the odds at the same time. Does anyone know of any good online stores/deals?
Posted by: Roger
Re: Do you live under a rock? [Doom3] - 16/07/2004 08:12
Posted by: Tim
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 16/07/2004 14:14
I resigned myself to the fact that Doom 3 or Halflife 2 would not be released during my lifetime. It almost happened... I just about had a heart attack when they announced they went gold 
I'm excited about Doom 3, even though RON is arriving today (Empire Earth just doesn't do it for me any more). I'm dying for Halflife 2 though... maybe it was just because of the great single-player story and TFC was just about the most fun I ever had in a multi-player game.
- Tim
I'm excited about Doom 3, even though RON is arriving today (Empire Earth just doesn't do it for me any more). I'm dying for Halflife 2 though... maybe it was just because of the great single-player story and TFC was just about the most fun I ever had in a multi-player game.
- Tim
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 16/07/2004 15:30
Quote:
I just about had a heart attack when they announced they went gold
You just need a paper bag...
Posted by: peter
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 16/07/2004 15:33
Quote:
You just need a paper bag...
I didn't get that at all. What's the paper bag for? Preventing hyperventilation?
Peter
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 16/07/2004 15:58
I was thinking about a topic along the lines of the gay marriage thread that is about my plans to romance and subsequently marry my copy of Doom 3 when it shows up. Not sure how either side would come down on that desire
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 16/07/2004 16:04
Quote:
my plans to romance and subsequently marry my copy of Doom 3 when it shows up. Not sure how either side would come down on that desire
Or better yet, how Mrs. Doom3 will react when you start eyeing Ms. Halflife2 a month later.
Peter: Yes, hyperventilation.
Posted by: Tim
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 16/07/2004 16:06
That was great! 
UserFriendly has great cartoons occasionally - I haven't followed it for about two or three years. I guess it might be time to start looking again.
- Tim
UserFriendly has great cartoons occasionally - I haven't followed it for about two or three years. I guess it might be time to start looking again.
- Tim
Posted by: AndrewT
Re: Do you live under a rock? [Doom3] - 16/07/2004 17:01
Leading up to the release of Quake 1/2/3 I was forever on Blues checking for .plan updates and so on but this time around, based largely upon JC's lack of public posting a while back, I stopped checking. Now Doom3's release is imminent I'm obviously hankering after getting my hands on a copy to put it mildly!
Does anyone have any idea of what the system requirements are going to look like?
I know I need to upgrade my graphics card, preferably with a sub £100 card but I'm not in a position to do a massive PC upgrade. Here's what I have at the moment:
P4 2.53GHz
1GB PC2100
GeForce 4 MX 420
Win XP
Am I likely to get away with this or am I SOL?
Does anyone have any idea of what the system requirements are going to look like?
I know I need to upgrade my graphics card, preferably with a sub £100 card but I'm not in a position to do a massive PC upgrade. Here's what I have at the moment:
P4 2.53GHz
1GB PC2100
GeForce 4 MX 420
Win XP
Am I likely to get away with this or am I SOL?
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 16/07/2004 18:18
Quote:
eyeing
I prefer the term "humping" to "eyeing" with respect to Halflife 2
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 19/07/2004 21:24
Quote:Probably because User Friendly is seldom if ever funny. You were expecting a joke where one did not exist as such.
I didn't get that at all.
Posted by: Roger
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 20/07/2004 07:08
Quote:
If so, Doom 3 = August 5, officially announced. Feel free to clean yourself up now. Oh, that's 2004
Not in the UK, where, apparently, it's due on the 13th (according to both play.com and Amazon UK).
Fortunately, that means that it won't clash with the Great British Beer Festival, which is 3rd-7th August.
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 14:08
Ship, dammit. SHIP. Amazon! (shaking fist)
[edit]I sure hope it's not illegal to threaten a customer service rep with the possibility of a baby seal being clubbed if an order doesn't go out as scheduled ...
[edit]I sure hope it's not illegal to threaten a customer service rep with the possibility of a baby seal being clubbed if an order doesn't go out as scheduled ...
Posted by: drakino
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 16:13
Quote:
I sure hope it's not illegal to threaten a customer service rep with the possibility of a baby seal being clubbed if an order doesn't go out as scheduled ...
At least you have someone to threaten. I have no clue when, or where ATI is shipping my 2 year old preorder. And e-mails to customer service get met with blank stares.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 16:25
Tod cancelled his Amazon order because it hadn't shipped yet, we're gonna go buy our copies today the old-fashioned way.
Posted by: drakino
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 16:30
I can't cancel my ATI order and get any money back, because it was a bundle deal. Buy one of the first shipping Radeon 9700 Pros at Quakecon 2002, get Doom 3, the card, and a Remote Wonder. The card and Remote Wonder have done their job just fine for the past 2 years, awaiting the game the card was built for.
Guess I could go stop by my old address and make sure they don't turn away any deliveries to me. ATI claims my address was updated, but I have no clue if the person found the right database since they commented "We have nothing to do with Doom 3", even with my Quakecon reciept attached.
*sigh*
Guess I could go stop by my old address and make sure they don't turn away any deliveries to me. ATI claims my address was updated, but I have no clue if the person found the right database since they commented "We have nothing to do with Doom 3", even with my Quakecon reciept attached.
*sigh*
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 16:41
Yep. They screwed me. They ran out and decided they'd rather not notify me. I've had this thing preordered for MONTHS.
Posted by: JeffS
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 17:29
Quote:
They ran out and decided they'd rather not notify me. I've had this thing preordered for MONTHS.
I hope they don't do that with the Star Wars DVD preorders . . .
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 17:38
Nah. Lucasfilm will just screw you by only having the Special Edition versions on there and not the real movies.
Posted by: JeffS
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 17:42
Yeah, well I'm prepared for that already.
Posted by: peakmop
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 17:48
I guess this is only a marketing trick. Same thing happened to me when the cable modems first became available...
I only wish they come up with Linux version of the game sooner
I only wish they come up with Linux version of the game sooner
Posted by: Cybjorg
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 18:11
Quote:
Yep. They screwed me. They ran out and decided they'd rather not notify me. I've had this thing preordered for MONTHS.
Ah, memories of Seinfeld...
Quote:
JERRY: I don't understand, I made a reservation, do you have my reservation?
RENTAL CAR AGENT: Yes, we do, unfortunately we ran out of cars.
JERRY: But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.
RENTAL CAR AGENT: I know why we have reservations.
JERRY: I don't think you do. If you did, I'd have a car. See, you know how to take the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation and that's really the most important part of the reservation, the holding. Anybody can just take them.
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 19:20
I was actually thinking of this same Seinfeld gag when I was talking to the Amazon customer service rep.
Posted by: tman
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 20:02
One trick a particular mail order company does here in the UK is to accept preorders and if they then find out they can't get it for that price they change the product code. Your preorder will stay in the system forever as they won't add any stock under that code. Sods.
They don't accept any money until you actually get the item shipped obviously.
They don't accept any money until you actually get the item shipped obviously.
Posted by: loren
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 20:06
Just got my first looks at the first and seconds levels. Looks amazing, but it'll take a monster machine to run it at a decent size and framerate. It's chunking all over the place on some of our fastest dev machines.
Posted by: tman
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 20:16
Damn. What spec is the dev machines?
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 20:20
Quote:
It's chunking all over the place on some of our fastest dev machines.
Make sure you didn't go in and set the detail levels to "Ultra" for everything. I haven't gotten the game yet, but what I've read tells me that the "Ultra" detail level is only for next-generation video cards with 512 megs or more of video memory. Most of the video cards available today have only 128 or 256 megs of video memory, and the "Ultra" detail level won't fit on those cards because it pumps up to 600 megs of textures to the card and will cause chunky gameplay if you try. The "High" detail level is meant for 256 meg video cards, and it compresses certain kinds of lightmaps or normal maps (don't remember which) before sending them to the card. The Ultra level compresses nothing, hence the huge memory requirements.
Posted by: loren
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 20:50
The machine I saw it on is a Dual 2.something with a one gen behind card... guys not at his desk right now so I don't know the exact model, but it's one of the newer FX line. He was running on default settings (medium) at 640x480 and was still getting chugs everytime you'd enter a new room. Highest we tried was High at 800x600. Pretty unplayable. Others are reporting similar results on slightly better machines.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 20:57
OK, cool.
Chugs are usually texture loads. Most of the time when I see that stuff happening, it's because the computer or the video card doesn't have enough free RAM to do the job smoothly. Also, it could be caused by an AGP bus that's not running at its full speed, and it's taking longer than expected to squirt the textures to the card.
Of course, I've also seen games where the chunk happens simply because the game code doesn't manage the texture loads efficiently enough. Hope that's not what's happening here, or there are going to be a lot of disappointed people tonight.
Chugs are usually texture loads. Most of the time when I see that stuff happening, it's because the computer or the video card doesn't have enough free RAM to do the job smoothly. Also, it could be caused by an AGP bus that's not running at its full speed, and it's taking longer than expected to squirt the textures to the card.
Of course, I've also seen games where the chunk happens simply because the game code doesn't manage the texture loads efficiently enough. Hope that's not what's happening here, or there are going to be a lot of disappointed people tonight.
Posted by: genixia
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 03/08/2004 23:56
Great. After years of waiting for the software, now we're going to have to wait for years for the hardware too!
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 04/08/2004 04:15
I'm on a 2.4Ghz, Radeon 9700Pro, 1G RAM. Running at 800x600 Medium Quality. It's both stunning and almost always 30fps (with an occasional blip below, but always very playable). I'm curious to try higher res + higher quality just to see what it looks like, but I believe I'm at the edge of my machine's capabilities currently.
This game is so incredibly immersive. The amount of detail is just amazing in the environments -- it's obvious why it took them so long to finish it. The other part that is very surprising is that there really is a story and it is actually interesting. They also have tons of unique NPC's -- no repeating Half-Life scientists ("I won't move another step!") and the voice acting is great. Definitely some serious attention to detail here.
By the way, I'm at the forum here because Doom just made my adrenaline shoot through the roof and I need to come down. It's a really creepy game.
This game is so incredibly immersive. The amount of detail is just amazing in the environments -- it's obvious why it took them so long to finish it. The other part that is very surprising is that there really is a story and it is actually interesting. They also have tons of unique NPC's -- no repeating Half-Life scientists ("I won't move another step!") and the voice acting is great. Definitely some serious attention to detail here.
By the way, I'm at the forum here because Doom just made my adrenaline shoot through the roof and I need to come down. It's a really creepy game.
Posted by: Cybjorg
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 04/08/2004 12:04
Quote:
I'm on a 2.4Ghz, Radeon 9700Pro, 1G RAM.
Those are my specs as well. Nice to know things are running pretty well.
Posted by: Roger
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 04/08/2004 12:57
Quote:
I'm on a 2.4Ghz, Radeon 9700Pro, 1G RAM.
That's similar to my specs: I'm on an Athlon 3200+ (at 2.21GHz), Radeon 9800 Pro (128MB), 1GB RAM.
It's good to know that I won't need to upgrade just yet.
One question, though: how much video card memory do you have, out of interest?
Posted by: peter
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 04/08/2004 13:01
Quote:
I'm on a 2.4Ghz, Radeon 9700Pro, 1G RAM. Running at 800x600 Medium Quality.
I've still got somewhere a 1992 copy of PCW where they reward the year's best PC systems... the award for Power User System started off something like "What is a power user? Well, nowadays you could almost say that a power user is someone who plays games..." It's been interesting to watch that statement's journey from whimsy to orthodoxy over the intervening twelve years...
Peter (all of whose favourite games could run in a BBC micro emulator running in a RiscPC emulator on a machine of that spec)
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 04/08/2004 13:04
I believe it's 128M on the card ... I'll double check in a little bit.
[Edit] Yep ... dxdiag says 128M
[Edit] Yep ... dxdiag says 128M
Posted by: mschrag
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 04/08/2004 13:31
Also, for ATI people, ATI released beta Doom 3 optimized drivers yesterday:
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4547.html
http://www.ati.com/support/infobase/4547.html
Posted by: drakino
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 04/08/2004 18:37
Ok, called ATI today. Grunt level customer service guy had no clue, transferred me to second level. He found my 9700 order by my phone number. Oddly the order number on the reciept wasn't valid. Anyhow, he also wasn't sure about it, so I got transferred to some guy on the "Internet promotions team" who did know about it, and took down my correct address.
Now comes the problem. They anticipate shipping the copies out middle of this month. Probably due to the now broken ties between iD and ATI, or something. Anyhow, I'm going to go buy a copy from the store to have for Quakecon, then when the ATI one comes, return it in unopened form back to the store for a refund.
Now comes the problem. They anticipate shipping the copies out middle of this month. Probably due to the now broken ties between iD and ATI, or something. Anyhow, I'm going to go buy a copy from the store to have for Quakecon, then when the ATI one comes, return it in unopened form back to the store for a refund.
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 04/08/2004 18:38
I'll probably be a promo copy with no bar code or something.
Posted by: Ezekiel
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 05/08/2004 00:53
You will be a promo copy? 
Posted by: tman
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 05/08/2004 01:11
This tweak might be useful. I've not got Doom 3 yet so can't tell you if it actually does anything significant.
Posted by: AndrewT
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 07/08/2004 23:34
Changing seta image_cacheMegs "something" doesn't make any difference to my timedemo1 scores (always 5.0 )
I optimistically tried changing seta image_useCache "0" to "1" but when I do that the game doesn't load and I get reverted back to the windows desktop.
Has anyone else had any better luck, oh, and BTW, I'm using a PC with 1GB, P4 2.5GHz, 64MB Nvidia gfx card?
)I optimistically tried changing seta image_useCache "0" to "1" but when I do that the game doesn't load and I get reverted back to the windows desktop.
Has anyone else had any better luck, oh, and BTW, I'm using a PC with 1GB, P4 2.5GHz, 64MB Nvidia gfx card?
Posted by: Cybjorg
Re: Do you live under a rock? - 07/08/2004 23:57
I changed my useCache to 1, my cacheMegs to 512 (half of my available RAM), and my cacheMink to 20480. It seems to work out fine for me.